FROM THIS EPISODE

Take cover! If you check out our show for tonight, you will note we have a bit of a concept happening here. I have broken the two hours below, so you can quickly see what we’re getting at here.

Our first hour is songs hopefully by the original artists that made them famous, if I did not get to the most original artist or band in this first hour, my apologies. In our second hour, we will be checking out cover versions of the songs in the first hour, track by track. I started working on this show weeks ago, thinking it was a cool idea. What became challenging was to get track times to add up in a way to keep it happening track to track in both hours. It ended up being a very involved process of pairing up songs and moving them around. Finally, I had it all together and ready to present to you. Hopefully, you will dig it.

It is difficult, if not impossible to do justice to a Stooges song. It’s one of those cases where the original is just fine and it needs no other interpretation. That being said, now and then, someone takes a song to another place and makes it interesting. I think the Doctor Mix and the Remix versions of No Fun are really cool, as is the Sex Pistols version for sheer force and the vocals of Johnny Rotten. Joey Ramone did a great job on his version of 1969 on his solo album Don’t Worry About Me.

We could have very easily gone with the excellent cover of Shakin’ All Over done by Generation X but I thought perhaps the Lemon Kittens version was a bit more out there and since we don’t play them all that often, that was the way to go. Also tempting to go with Dinosaur Jr.’s version of the Kiss track Goin’ Blind. Perhaps we’ll play that one later in the summer.

Here’s something to note: we will be back together live on the radio next weekend. I will be off the road for a few weeks, working on things in LA and this allows Engineer X, the Young Will Bentley and myself to be with you all live. Always the best scenario. I have a few weeks between this leg of the tour and the European festivals I will be at in late July and August.

I have already started plotting and planning next week’s show. Perhaps we can take it out there into some stranger places, maybe it’s time for all of us to stretch a little. I’ll see what I can do.